This chapter from "Windows 10 Plain & Simple" shows you how to customize your Windows 10 desktop, including using themes, customizing the taskbar, and Lock Screen, moving and resizing tiles, and more.

In this section:

Changing the desktop background

Customize the Lock Screen

Using themes

Adjusting colors and transparency

Changing the screen saver

Making timeout settings

Enlarging text

Changing screen resolution

Customizing the taskbar

Adding tiles to the Start menu

Moving tiles

Resizing tiles

Using Snap to arrange apps on the Desktop

Windows 10 is an environment in which you’ll spend a lot of time, so being able to set up the appearance of its various elements in ways that please you is a great benefit. You can change the background image for the desktop, colors, the size of text, and more. You can also work with the size and placement of tiles in the Start menu.

Some of these settings customize the desktop appearance, whereas others make working with apps a lot easier. For example, you can arrange open windows on the desktop so that you can view more than one app at a time, which helps when you need to copy and paste contents from one app to another or reference information in one document while working in another. You can customize the taskbar contents such that the icons you need most often are always close at hand.

Changing the desktop background

We all like to personalize our work environment, from pinning photos to the wall of a cubicle at work to decorating the walls of our home office. In the same way, Windows 10 provides images that you can use to add visual appeal to your Desktop. To customize your Windows experience, you can change which Windows images appear as backgrounds, and even use your own images.

Choose a new background picture

To select your own picture as your background in step 5, you can click the Browse button (not shown in the illustration) and then locate a picture of your own by using File Explorer. When you’ve found the picture you want, click the Choose Picture button to select the image.

TIP

If you prefer a solid color background to a picture, click the Background drop-down list and choose Solid Color before making a background selection.